THE BIRTH OF MODERNISM
I must admit, I am seldom excited by academia and find it extrodinarily limiting considering how much larger the wider world is.Before returning to the Bahamas, I wished to do a Master's program and PHD thesis on the birth of Modernity combining both literature and the Visual arts.During my time away, I remember how excited I was being exposed to the ideas and thoughts of Pirandello, Picasso, and Brecht and so many more, devouring passionately the vibrancy of colour and form or burrying my head deep into mountains of books hanging onto every word or thought. I admired silmultaniously how they challenged order away from traditional molds to construct and reconstuct form.As life would have it, events and circumstances prevented me from completing this dream but I hope one day to fulfill an ambition.However, having been fortunate enough to be exposed to such great works, I realized how all expression is a direct commentary on a social and political experience framed by events happening at the moment. No artist I would imagine could nor would wish to be removed from his or her time.Snap shots and slices of life that froze moments in motion that no history book could reflect with such vivid detail.This could not be more exemplified than the works of German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer, Bertolt Brecht. He was one of the great influential figures of modern theatre and encouraged audiences to think rather than becoming too involved in the story line identifying more with the characters through effects of alienation. He developed a form of drama called Epic theatre in which ideas or didactic lessons were important.Of course there was also Luigi Pirandello, an Italian dramatist and novelist who was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. His famous play "Six characters in search of an author" spends much time demonstrating the limitations of the theatre as a medium of story-telling. Thus the play can be regarded as simply an exercise in the realm of a larger theatre; however, it also delves into the larger questions of defining existence and hints at the responsibilities inherent in creativity.From the visual arts there was Picasso's cubist artworks which broke up objects to analyze and re-assembled them in an abstracted form for the subject to be seen from a multitude of viewpoints where planes interpenetrate one another to create an ambiguous space.So thus began my appreciation and great admiration for the modern artist and the process by which he/she searched for truth .What is uniquely characteristic of each is their courage or mad obsession to dig into solid ground and lift up the proverbial rock to discover what lay beneath, to break down existing forms in order to create new ones.They did not seek to obliterate lines or objects but rather sought to redefine form in space"In the beginning the world was without form and void,then God created the heavens and the earth..."Each stroke or thought they discovered, brought creativity into being where laws and chaos defined space revealing multiple planes of existance..According to this theory, Law and Chaos are the dominant metaphysical forces which are in constant struggle with each other, but the interplay creates a neutrality by the Cosmic Balance.Perhaps these things are better articulated by theologians, scientists and philosophers but these artists attempted to humanize them by relating form to our common experience and everyday life.It is to their greatness that these works transcend time into ours with equal and important relevence.LIke I said, I am not a fan of acadamia but am familiar with Post modernist and deconstuctionists debates evolving today that seek to debunk much of what these modernists believed opting to celebrate more the individual as the essential rather than universal claims. But this too has its seeds planted deep within the modernist movement with such peoples as Irish playwright Samuel Becket (" waiting for Godot") and others . Though inspite much of the convincing arguments surronding such theories, I can only claim being personally liberated interlectually, emotionally and spiritually by their thoughts and ideas in a world prior to them had derrived much of its viewpoints from two dimentional perspectives essentially dictated from the Church and religious parochialisms. I suspect I can relate to all this being from the Bahamas where change is often slow in coming even when it involves personal experiences altering perspectives. We hold onto what are safe and comfortable ways of being even when truth is revealed.